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Preterm Birth Is Leading Global Cause of Death Among Young Children

by Sharon Mazel on November 17, 2014

Sharon Mazel

About the Author

Sharon Mazel is a journalist and mom to four girls. She works with Heidi Murkoff on her What To Expect book series and has written for The Washington Post, Parenting Magazine, Baby Talk Magazine, and of course, WhatToExpect.com. Before becoming a mom she was a TV writer and producer at NBC News, FOX News, and WPIX-NY.

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WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

By Sharon Mazel | November 16, 2014

Today is World Prematurity Day — a global movement aimed at raising awareness about premature birth and how it can be prevented. More than 200 countries, non-government organizations, UN agencies and medical and health organizations will participate, with more than 60 countries planning special events that focus on prematurity and premature babies.

The preterm birth rate in the U.S. declined between 2006 and 2013 — and thanks to advances in medical care for premature babies, your chances in this country of bringing home a normal, healthy infant after a premature birth are very good. However the U.S. still has one of the highest preterm birth rates of any high-resource country: In 2013, 11 percent of American babies were born preterm, most of them a result of being a twin or triplet.

Globally, premature birth is more dangerous. More than 3,000 babies around the world die each day from complications of preterm birth — the leading cause of death for young children. The global prematurity rate of more than one in 10 babies, or 15.1 million babies being born too soon, has continued to increase.

India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and China top the list of countries with the highest numbers of children under-5 dying from preterm birth complications each year, according to new findings published in The Lancet. In the U.S., 28 percent of under-5 deaths are due to direct complications from preterm birth, which translates to 8,100 deaths of children under age 5 each year. Other developed countries with higher rates: Denmark (43.0 percent), United Kingdom (38.7 percent), Switzerland (32.7 percent), Germany and Canada (29.1 percent).

Experts say that this international crisis represents one of the greatest health challenges of the 21st century and will require more awareness, public health interventions, and research dollars in an effort to prevent babies from being born too soon. That's because as of now, there's not a lot that's known about what causes preterm birth and how to prevent it.

In a paper published this month in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers say that even though it's known that certain factors — gum disease, smoking, poor weight gain, for instance — increase the chances of an expectant mom going into labor too early, there's little understanding of why those factors increase the risk. There's also no known reason for the racial disparity in premature births (black women have preterm birth rates that are 40 percent greater than those of Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women). And that's why more research into what causes preterm birth is so crucial. Without a clear understanding of how different risk factors contribute to preterm birth, it's hard to develop effective strategies for prevention.

Luckily, researchers have been given $250 million in new funding to help identify ways to prevent this global health problem, and they're hoping that within three to five years there will be real progress, enabling the lives of countless infants to be saved. Four major research initiatives looking into the causes of preterm birth and effective ways to prevent or delay premature labor are now underway:

The March of Dimes has launched a $75 million Campaign to End Premature Birth and has created a specialized network of research centers that are hoping to discover the causes of prematurity.

The University of California at San Francisco's Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi) has launched a 10-year global initiative to slow the epidemic of preterm births and improve the health of preterm babies.

In the meantime, doctors are urged to do whatever possible to prevent preterm birth — including reducing the number of embryos transferred as part of fertility treatment, not performing early cesarean deliveries that are not medically necessary, and making sure women with complicated pregnancies receive the best possible prenatal care. You too can play a part in making sure your pregnancy is as healthy as possible in an effort to help prevent preterm delivery.

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